Berlin cancels Nutcracker after stage is flooded
mainFaulty sprinklers at the Deutsche Oper have prompted the cancellation of the family-favourite Christmas Ballet.
It’s not clear when the house will reopen after flooding on Christmas Eve.
There’s a Magic Flute and Barber of Seville coming up in the next few days.
Maybe they could put on Le Roi d’Ys.
Noye’s Fludde?
According to their Facebook page, the Barbiere performance tonight has been cancelled tonight too. Tomorrow’s Zauberflöte might take place as a semi-staged or concert performance (update later today). Pre-sales up to 31 December have been frozen.
It’s pretty awful news for the house, and wretched timing. I am told the sprinklers have done a lot of very expensive damage to the technical equipment.
It would be very unusual for several sprinkler heads to fail simultaneously. They are built with a stopper that melts out in the intense heat of fire. They aren’t set off by one central valve or switch.
The sprinklers aren’t operated with built-in stoppers, which wouldn’t be feasible, they are operated by a computer system, which controls the amounts of water released and the areas in which it is released, either through self-activation, when sensors detect heat and fire or when manually commanded to do so (the Staatsoperette Dresden had a mishap earlier this year when they ran through a scheduled test of their sprinkler system and it ended up dumping 16.000 liters of water onto the stage electronics, causing more than €3mio damages).
Finally, Norman is a bit premature stating that “faulty sprinklers” are to blame. The police is currently still investigating whether a computer malfunction is to blame or whether the sprinklers were set off intentionally/wantonly, in which case charges of ‘wilful damage to property’ would be brought against those responsible.
Handel’s “Water Music”?